Free Republic

It’s time to acknowledge a milestone in the 2016 GOP primary. No, it’s not that Jeb Bush has broken his paleo diet. Rather, it’s that the leader in the Iowa polls is no longer the weakest frontrunner in caucus history! Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is now polling ahead of where Mitt Romney was at this point in the 2012 cycle. Walker is up to 18.4 percent in an average of Iowa polls conducted in 2015; Romney was at 18 percent in surveys conducted through the first half of 2011. Looking at just the last five surveys, Walker is now up...

Here’s why if the Iowa caucuses were today he would win and you wouldn’t... This memo amounts to an intervention. It serves to warn all other Republican presidential campaigns of a perfect storm looming on the horizon. Not only does the storm favor Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, but your combined failures/refusals to recognize it are only helping him. If that environment persists, Mr. Cruz will not only win Iowa next year, but win it convincingly. Your skepticism of Mr. Cruz’s candidacy, and willingness to play ball with a system the average Iowa conservative no longer trusts, is helping to positively...

"....This development, perhaps one of if not the biggest of the 2016 presidential campaign so far, comes as Walker has taken a commanding lead in polls in all three of the first GOP primary states: Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. The reason why this development is so significant is that the two establishment-backed candidates, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, both have an in-depth understanding of the immigration issue and come down on the side that supports special interests’ desire for a massive increase in legal immigration that hurts American workers. Meanwhile, Sens. Ted Cruz...

The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee accused the FBI on Monday of not cooperating with the Department of Justice’s top watchdog in the investigation of the Fast and Furious gunrunning scandal, among others, endangering Congress’s ability to be a check on the administration’s actions

Several prominent Republicans are trying to push immigration restrictionist groups to the fringe of the debate by challenging their conservative credentials and attacking their stance on population control, The Washington Post reports. GOP heavyweights like Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and power broker Grover Norquist are backing an effort to inform conservatives about the history of groups like the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), NumbersUSA and the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS). (SNIP) Those organizations are now the leading conservative voices against immigration, both legal and illegal, and have received the endorsement of Republicans like Senators Lamar Smith (R-Texas) and...

The Obama administration is unfairly blocking tens of thousands of military veterans from owning guns, a Republican senator is charging. The FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) is filled with military veterans who are essentially banned from owning guns, even though they may not be a danger to society, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) wrote this week in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder. The gun ban "effectively voids their Second Amendment rights,” Grassley said. At issue is whether these veterans are suffering from mental illnesses. According to a 2013 Senate report, the Department of...

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee told an Iowa talk radio show host on Saturday that young Christians should wait until President Obama left office before considering military service. He said there is a culture of persecution in the military under Obama, making it a “hostile work environment.”

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) thinks he knows something that you don't about former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. Bloomberg News' Dave Weigel reported Friday that Paul gave a speech to a pro-life group the day before in which Paul predicted the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation will soon be hit by a major scandal. "There's going to be stuff coming out about the Clinton foundation and their donations from different companies that get special approval by the secretary of state. It's coming out in the next couple weeks," Paul said. As Weigel noted, Paul has made similar...

Earlier this week we took a look at the GOP efforts to repeal the death tax, including some of the political pitfalls involved as well as reasons why it’s still a hill worth fighting on. In a rare moment of taking a position on a policy issue, Hillary Clinton has chimed in on the so called estate tax several times over the years. She has referred to it as a “wealth tax”, which works out quite well for her this year if she’s trying to angle her way into a more Elizabeth Warren style position on the subject. So...

Is another shoe about to drop on the Clinton Foundation, and on Hillary Clinton’s problematic rollout? Newsweek’s Rory Ross reported this morning that the largest individual donor to the Clinton family business has conducted trade with Iran, perhaps in breach of US sanctions. Ukrainian energy mogul Victor Pinchuk has connections to the Clintons that go back almost a decade, and financial connections to the regime in Tehran that go much farther: The fourth richest man in Ukraine, Pinchuk owns Interpipe Group, a Cyprus-incorporated manufacturer of seamless pipes used in oil and gas sectors.Newsweek has seen declarations and documents from...

Texas Gov. Rick Perry may have forgotten a thing or two about the Al Gore presidential campaign he helped lead in 1988. In an interview with an Iowa radio station on Monday, the Republican presidential contender explained his role as the Gore campaign’s Texas chairman by saying that “this was Al Gore before he invented the Internet and got to be Mr. Global Warming.”

In an interview with an Iowa radio station on Monday, the Republican presidential contender explained his role as the Gore campaign’s Texas chairman by saying that “this was Al Gore before he invented the Internet and got to be Mr. Global Warming.” But in fact, global warming was already a significant theme for Gore in 1987 and 1988 — long before his activism led to several books, a Nobel Prize and a part in an Academy Award-winning film. It was also well before the right gave him the "Mr. Ozone" nickname and talk radio heaped endless mockery on the future...

I would like to think this headline from Newsweek is simply being sarcastic, but I doubt this is the case: Who Reported on Hillary Clinton's Historic Chipotle Visit, and How? This headline was written by people who have no conception of what is and isn't historical. SNIP Hillary going to a Chipotle counter and saying, "I'll have a chicken bowl with a side of guacamole," is not historic. SNIP

Editor's note: WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT They thought the Iowa Governor’s Conference on LGBTQ Youth was about anti-bullying. Instead, about 1,000 teenagers from more than 100 Iowa communities were treated to a profanity-laced performance by a drag queen along with graphic conversations on oral sex and a transgender tutorial on how to make fake testicles. The April 3rd conference was sponsored by Iowa Safe Schools, a non-profit group that creates “safe and supportive schools” for LGBTQ young people. Some parents were furious about some of the sexually explicit comments from paid speakers – including a comedian who told the high school...

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/politics/2015/03/17/democrat-jim-webb-hires-aide-rania-batrice/24890241/Gannet publication. Link only.

Hillary Clinton tweeted out a new video this morning featuring a one Mike Yowell, a much quoted gay rights activist in Iowa who was on hand at an Iowa diner yesterday and thanked Clinton for coming out in favor of the Supreme Court ruling in favor gay marriage. Check it out:

Howard Dean can't handle the truth. Rather than discussing the implications of Hillary Clinton kicking off her campaign by handpicking the "everyday Americans" she spoke with at her first event in Iowa, Dean dissed the Daily Mail, the source of the story. On today's Morning Joe, the volatile former Vermont governor scoffed "it's the Daily Mail. Why would you believe this?" Why, Howard? Well, for starters, the Mail quotes one of the participants by name and at length about the vetting process he underwent prior to being ushered into Hillary's presence. And if the story were inaccurate, don't you think...

...as she huddles with Democratic leaders in high-stakes meeting Hillary Clinton’s now-famous Scooby Doo van made an appearance in Council Bluffs, Iowa on Thursday for a closed-door meeting with state Democratic Party officials – and it idled in a handicapped parking space from beginning to end. Footage broadcast by KETV-7 in the nearby city of Omaha, Nebraska, showed the presidential nominee emerging from a cafe, greeting onlookers and walking past the blue handicapped-parking sign to climb into the vehicle. Secret Service agents are technically federal law enforcement officers, so there was no chance of a parking ticket, even if Scooby...

Krystal Ball doesn't seem to be sold on Hillary Clinton's "listening tour" campaign shtick. In a segment discussing the former secretary of state's carefully-staged campaign swings in Iowa, The Cycle co-host and former Virginia congressional candidate confessed Hillary's campaign rollout isn't doing much for her, and, she suspects, that's probably true of how it's being received by most voters. Ball made the remarks in a discussion with Brian Beutler of The New Republic. Here's the relevant transcript: MSNBC The Cycle April 15, 2015 3:08 p.m. Eastern KRYSTAL BALL, co-host: But, Brian, I wanted to get your take. Is this listening...

Presidential candidates who can authentically can talk about their relationship to the American Immigrant Experience can sometimes experience a boost in public opinion, which is why Hillary Clinton recently spoke about how her grandparents — all of them — always talked to her about emigrating to America. A recent report indicates, however, that most of them weren’t exactly immigrants. According to Andrew Kaczynski, three of Clinton’s grandparents were not immigrants: Census data and draft cards from the 1920′s and 1930′s revealed that her paternal grandmother was born in Pennsylvania, and both of her maternal grandparents were born in Illinois. (That’s...